Freedom

I haven’t written in awhile because the moments recently have been too full. There is more learning and new time than reflection time. That is because I am, or have been, completely untethered and a little nervous but mostly grateful and hungry for more understanding. For the first time in my life my mind is still enough to stop planning. Sure, I plan things from time to time, but they are things that are generally within the next 20 minutes, rather than 20 years.

We live so long now that there has to be some time to break away from the system, to let everything in your life break, to be broken. How else are we supposed to learn? We fill up the towns until they become cities and it costs too much to live there so parents have to work and leave the kids to be educated by the system from the age of 3 sometimes to 18.

The next expectation in modern middle class America is more hypothetical education at college. And then the dream of a full time job in the field you think you love with all of the benefits. A job that you can have until you’re 70! And a lot of people that work there have been there for longer than you’ve been alive. And you see the next 40 years of your life there and you cry.

I put a deposit down on a room this morning, moving in next week, so no longer will I be living about my wits… in that regard. Paying rent in LA with a job is hard enough though, and seeing as how my “employment” with odd jobs here and there is less than conventional, it looks like I might have to learn how to start committing again.

My problems reveal themselves to be more and more first world as the days go by and I sleep in my car or on couches. I hope I can remember my privilege and be grateful when I step into my new room next week and know right then where I will be sleeping that night. I am so naive and lucky in the cards I have been dealt.

I have felt so lucky to be free, but if I have felt true freedom I know that it is because I couldn’t hold onto anything anymore. I know that I am so lucky to have had something to hold onto in the first place. How complex are the things that we experience everyday and yesterday when we not only take the time to reflect, but when we also take the time to learn and break and be free.